It is clear that Jesus loves us and forgives our sins and invites us to walk with him. What happens if we sin again? If we repent, we are always forgiven. So the real challenge is not to win God's forgiveness, but to love God with all our being so that we honestly want to repent when we do fail and fall into sin.

The first reading today, from the Second Book of Samuel, tells us God's response when David, who was deeply love by God, gets caught up in his own desires and ignores God and has Uriah killed so that he can have the wife of Uriah for his own. David has already had a relationship with the wife of Uriah and she is pregnant with his child. David is hardly the first human being to have killed someone because he wanted something! It is pretty brutal, for sure, but there are other ways of killing the people we want out of the way.

The most important point of the first reading, however, is that David does repent and God forgives him.

The second reading, from the Letter to the Galatians, tells us that we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. Yet often we act towards others as if only their actions count. We so often judge others by their actions instead of seeking to touch the faith within them. Actions are important and Saint James reminds us that faith without actions is not true faith. But so often our actions are only a very weak reflection of our faith - and that is also true in others.

The Gospel today, from Saint Luke, is also clear about actions when the sinful woman begins to weep and to wash the feet of Jesus with her tears. In this woman, her heart is reflected in her actions and Jesus sees her heart and understands her love accepts her. The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

So we come with this question today, directed to our hearts: How much has been forgiven me? It is a wonderful question for us to ponder this week.